Electronic Book Review - black and whitehttp://www.electronicbookreview.com/tags/black-and-white
enFirst Person: Introductionhttp://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/rewired
<div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden clearfix">
<div class="markup">by</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">Pat Harrigan</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-publication-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">2004-05-02</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-source-url field-type-link-field field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Source URL:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>In addition to their long nonwired histories, game equipment and literature now exist as forms of computer-based experience. We might say they exist both as “new media” and perhaps “physically” or in “real life.” Game equipment and literature are not the only concerns of <span class="booktitle">First Person</span> <cite id="note_1">The new media field includes those who learned the term “first person” as the name for a grammatical tense and literary point of view; those who use it to describe the well-known cinematic POV; those who associate it with the movement of a virtual “camera” through a computer graphic scene; those who mainly utter it as the first two words in the computer game genre of the “first person shooter”; and even those for whom it evokes images of invention and discovery, as in “arguably, the first person to make it work.” As creative exploration continues, and the new media field evolves, our meanings for “first person” will no doubt continue to evolve – but there seems little chance it will leave our vocabulary.</cite>, but they are central – let’s start with them.</p>
<p>It is now the case that the market for computer games (handheld games, arcade games, games for PCs and consoles) dwarfs that of their physical counterparts (card and board games, sports equipment, tabletop role-playing games). Meanwhile, the market for computer literature seems nonexistent. But is it really? Many of the most popular computer games, those that have pushed the industry’s growth (until its revenue is not just larger than that for non-computer games, but rivals the feature film industry’s box office revenue) clearly have some form of story as a major component. The first big game hit of the 2000s wasn’t a descendent of the abstract <span class="booktitle">Tetris</span>; it was <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span> <sup>TM</sup> – a system for generating stories about suburban life. Similarly, in the 1990s, the first massively popular CD-ROM was <span class="booktitle">Myst</span> – in which players uncovered the story of an intricate and beautiful world.</p>
<p>But maybe these are overly facile categorizations. Couldn’t it be argued that <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span> is a resource-management experience, and that <span class="booktitle">Myst</span> is an exploration and puzzle-solving experience – that the gameplay is the central experience, and that generated or embedded stories are at best “themes” (which could be switched out for others), or even distractions? Isn’t it the case that <span class="booktitle">Counter-Strike</span> – which speeds up the essential multiplayer interaction and removes the replayability limiting story – is a better game than <span class="booktitle">Half-Life</span>, on which it is based? <span class="booktitle">Counter-Strike</span>, after all, was created by players, who might be better guides to what makes a good gaming experience than the creators of narrative games (who may be in the unfortunate throes of what Eric Zimmerman calls “cinema envy”). Yet it was players who, in the first year of this new century, kept sending games with strong story components – <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span>, the book-derived <span class="booktitle">Harry Potter</span>, the mythic, multi-act <span class="booktitle">Black and White</span> – to the tops of the charts.</p>
<p>This line of questioning, about the relationship between stories and games, is one of the major themes of <span class="booktitle">First Person</span>, and is addressed by theorists and practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds.</p>
<p>Yet we began by talking about literature. Surely “story” is not all there is to literature in new media; if we are talking of literature, where is text – where are the words? The Sim characters for which the game is named don’t utter sentences that tell a story – much less language that edifies or entertains – but rather communicate through icons and gibberish to indicate what is on their simple minds.</p>
<p>And this seems appropriate for the roles these proto-characters play. But this begs the question: what about the times when some more complex linguistic form is called for? Settembrini, in Mann’s <span class="booktitle">The Magic Mountain</span>, may insist that form is folderol, but the editors of this volume respectfully disagree. Text in new media – fiction, poetry, performance – must have some utility other than in the form of the cut-scene, although to find it we may have to look outside the mainstream. If <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span> and <span class="booktitle">Black and White</span> are the surprisingly good summer blockbusters (or the better bestsellers), we still may still wish to locate the art films (or the small presses).</p>
<p>This is another major concern of this project: the exploration of new textual experiences – and other new literary/linguistic experiences – created by artists, poets, programmers, and fiction writers. Our concerns are broader than those found in 1990s surveys of “hypertext,” <cite id="note_2">A term now generally used more narrowly than intended by its creator, Ted Nelson. See the section “Hypertexts and Interactives” in this volume.</cite> yet are more focused than a rundown of abstruse textual possibilities. In <span class="booktitle">First Person</span> we provide examples of textual/literary practices (including hypertexts) that in their internal procedures or audience interaction can be thought of as performance or gameplay, or that provoke us to reconsider these terms. Although far from exhaustive, this survey counterpoints the “storygame” discussion, and opens up for examination some of the most noteworthy intersections of new media and literary practice.</p>
<p><span class="booktitle">First Person</span> is organized as a series of imagined panel presentations, <cite id="note_3">Not surprising, considering that many of these essays began life as presentations at conferences such as ACM SIGGRAPH, Digital Arts and Culture, and ACM Hypertext.</cite> which are extraordinary in two respects. First, they gather a selection of field leaders and rising stars from a wider range of backgrounds (theoretical, technical, and artistic) than are commonly found together at any conference. Second, these panels incorporate exceptional audience members who – virtual microphones in hand – respond to each contributor, encouraging them to review fundamental aspects of their argument, reevaluate claims, or expand on statements too-lightly delivered. Each author then offers a final statement to her or his respondents.</p>
<p>From these presentations and their follow-up discussions we have created the <span class="booktitle">First Person</span> book and web site, constructed as an experiment in publication. The web site – created in collaboration with <span class="journaltitle">electronic book review</span> – will build over time, while the book will be released, unsurprisingly, all at once. All the panel presentations will appear both online and in print; the first set of audience responses will appear only in print, and the next set of responses and the authors’ final statements will appear only online. From there the online discussion will continue to grow – with expanding “first person” commentary from another level of thoughtful readership: including, perhaps, you.</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><span class="emphasis">Contributors</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center">Noah Wardrip-Fruin, editor</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Pat Harrigan, editor</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Espen Aarseth</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Mark Bernstein</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco</p>
<p style="text-align:center">John Cayley</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Chris Crawford</p>
<p style="text-align:center">J. Yellowlees Douglas</p>
<p style="text-align:center">J. Yellowlees Douglas and Andrew Hargadon</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Johanna Drucker</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Markku Eskelinen</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Mary Flanagan</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Gonzalo Frasca</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Matt Gorbet</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Diane Gromala</p>
<p style="text-align:center">N. Katherine Hayles</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Mizuko Ito</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Henry Jenkins</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Natalie Jeremijenko</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Jesper Juul</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Brenda Laurel</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Bryan Loyall</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Michael Mateas</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Jon McKenzie</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Nick Montfort</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Stuart Moulthrop</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Janet Murray</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Celia Pearce</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Simon Penny</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Ken Perlin</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Rita Raley</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Rebecca Ross</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Warren Sack</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Richard Schechner</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Bill Seaman</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Phoebe Sengers</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Andrew Stern</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Stephanie Strickland</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Lucy Suchman</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Eugene Thacker</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Camille Utterback</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Victoria Vesna</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Jill Walker</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Adrianne Wortzel</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Will Wright</p>
<p style="text-align:center">Eric Zimmerman</p>
<p style="text-align:center"><a class="internal" href="/thread/firstperson/expressive">Section One: Cyberdrama</a></p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p><span class="booktitle">Call of Cthulhu</span>. Sandy Peterson; Chaosium. 1981.</p>
<p><span class="booktitle">Delta Green</span>. Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy and John Tynes; Pagan Publishing. 1997.</p>
<p><span class="booktitle">Dungeons and Dragons</span>. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson; Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). 1974.</p>
<p><span class="booktitle">GURPS</span>. Steve Jackson et al.; Steve Jackson Games. 1986.</p>
<p><span class="booktitle">Unknown Armies</span>. Greg Stolze and John Tynes; Atlas Games. 1999.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/tetris">tetris</a>, <a href="/tags/sims">the sims</a>, <a href="/tags/myst">myst</a>, <a href="/tags/counter-strike">counter-strike</a>, <a href="/tags/half-life">half-life</a>, <a href="/tags/harry-potter">harry potter</a>, <a href="/tags/black-and-white">black and white</a>, <a href="/tags/thomas-mann">thomas mann</a>, <a href="/tags/magic-mountain">the magic mountain</a>, <a href="/tags/call-cthulhu">call of cthulhu</a>, <a href="/tags/delta-green">delta green</a>, <a href="/tags/dennis-detwiller">dennis detwiller</a>, <a href="/tags/adam-scott-glancy">adam scott glancy</a>, <a href="/tags/john-tynes">john tynes</a>, <a href="/tags/gurps">GURPS</a>, <a href="/tags/unknown-armies">unknown armies</a>, <a href="/tags/new-media">new media</a>, <a href="/tags/ted-nelson">Ted Nelson</a>, <a href="/tags/hypertext">hypertext</a>, <a href="/tags/poet">poet</a></div></div></div>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:05 +0000EBR Administrator1062 at http://www.electronicbookreview.comDouglas and Hargadon respond in turnhttp://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/antibinary
<div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden clearfix">
<div class="markup">by</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">J. Yellowlees Douglas</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-publication-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">2004-11-04</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-riposte-to field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Riposte to:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/thread/firstperson/avecplaisir">The Pleasures of Immersion and Interaction</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-source-url field-type-link-field field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Source URL:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Maybe our culture is so saturated with binaries that we have difficulty avoiding them. Perhaps new media criticism seems to be skewed more heavily toward, say, hypertext fiction than videogames - the equivalent of the scholarly focus lavished on James Joyce while poor old Stephen King gets the academic equivalent of short shrift. But Henry Jenkins’ response projects a sort of elitist haute culture vs. lowbrow division in our article that, on close reading, doesn’t exist. We begin by describing problematic traditional assumptions, after which we describe a continuum uniting engagement, flow, and immersion. We’re interested primarily in the cognitive demands placed on us when we turn to entertainment, especially where these demands touch on familiar and unfamiliar cognitive schemas. The most contentious aspect of our definition - using “widely read” to describe people who prefer engagement in their entertainment over immersion - does not apply simply to books but also to videogames, cinema, television, music, and popular culture, most of which are hardly the stuff of haute culture. And, actually, our interests are skewed heavily toward the immersive: the first draft of our article contained a Freudian slip, “Immersion and Interactivity” for “Immersion and Engagement.” Truth be told, we’re fonder of immersion than of engagement.</p>
<p>Immersion doesn’t imply, de facto, formulaic elements; it entails, instead, the mapping out of clear-cut schemas, providing readers or users with a fairly clear map of the territory ahead. Further, our vision of engagement is a bit more active than Richard Schechner probably envisions, although he quite rightly points out that the interiorized experience of reading or playing an interactive game may seem relatively rich compared with the most impoverished texts – the knee-jerk twitch games, the Harlequin romances and genre fantasies. In our definition, engagement lies not in the number or nature of choices offered us but in the cognitive loads necessary to make sense of the experience confronting us. If we need to resort to extra-textual resources outside the text’s frame, we tend to be engaged; if we sink into a stupor that begins somewhere near Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief and rapidly damps out all perception of the world humming around us, we’re immersed.</p>
<p>We’d argue, moreover, that any medium can host texts that occupy spaces all over that immersion-flow-engagement continuum. Obviously, some genres get their effects - enjoy their juiciest sales - from their promise of immersion: ask any twitch player how much backstory she wants, and you’re liable to get a blank stare. Genre readers pay for the privilege of having their expectations satisfied utterly, right down to the twelve or eighteen red herrings salting the average mystery novel. Not surprisingly, digital technologies are already helping us create fresh schemas by melding together elements of what have been mostly separate and distinct schemas. Interactive shoot-em-ups, for instance, borrow heavily from video arcade schemas, requiring fast reflexes and well-honed eye-hand coordination but not necessarily a good eye for reading characters or a long memory for backstory’s ancient history. Simulation interactives, however, hover somewhere between immersion and engagement in the vicinity of flow, which may explain both their addictiveness and the accolades simulations like <span class="booktitle">Black and White</span> have reaped from gaming pundits. When you’re hunkered down with <span class="booktitle">Railroad Tycoon</span> or Sid Meier’s <span class="booktitle">Antietam!</span> or <span class="booktitle">SimCity</span> or, for that matter, <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span>, you’re engaged in building an empire or strategies or cities and scenarios, bound by the constraints of the game’s own time clock. And yet you’re also immersed, dealing with the other-world you’re creating as if it were real in an experience that is essentially open-ended: you can abandon it, leave and come back to it, continue adding to it, even leave things to their own devices and watch them run, a virtual <span class="foreignWord">deus abs conditus</span> peering down at a world of railroad robber barons and disgruntled Sims ready to rip one another’s eyes out, still developing and stewing hours after we’ve tweaked our last variable.</p>
<p>Our primary point in analyzing the aesthetic pleasures of interactives: we’re awaiting the eventual redefinition of entertainment itself, in terms of our schemas and scripts. Before the advent of interactives, you needed a detailed script for pure engagement but only a simple, austere script for pure immersion. To play chess or music in an orchestra or Australian rules football with a bunch of mates, I need to know a whole panoply of rules and regulations - what’s acceptable, what’s expected, what’s verboten. To watch a play or film or to read a book, I need only follow a relatively simple script:</p>
<p>1. Watch, or<br />
2. Read.</p>
<p>These scripts, however, are already morphing: playing any interactive game, for example, can require periods where we necessarily shift into and out of engagement mode. Some of Richard Schechner’s response, interestingly, itself describes both modes separately. When we follow Darryl Strawberry’s exploits on the diamond, we’re immersed. When we, however, track his story through rehab, remission, the courts, and seedy halfway houses, we’re engaged. Watching Maggie Smith play a repressed spinster in <span class="booktitle">Lettice and Lovage</span> or <span class="booktitle">Washington Square</span> is immersive. Pondering what Smith’s repressed spinster persona brings to <span class="booktitle">Washington Square</span> via <span class="booktitle">The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne</span> or <span class="booktitle">The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie</span> is engaging. What’s most intriguing, most promising about interactives is their ability to combine, to blur, and perhaps, ultimately, to confound these hitherto largely discrete modes.</p>
<p style="text-align:right"><a class="internal" href="/thread/firstperson/outgrowth">back to Hypertexts and Interactives introduction</a></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/james-joyce">james joyce</a>, <a href="/tags/stephen-king">stephen king</a>, <a href="/tags/henry-jenkins">henry jenkins</a>, <a href="/tags/richard-schechner">richard schechner</a>, <a href="/tags/freud">freud</a>, <a href="/tags/black-and-white">black and white</a>, <a href="/tags/railroad-tycoon">railroad tycoon</a>, <a href="/tags/antietam">antietam</a>, <a href="/tags/sim-city">sim city</a>, <a href="/tags/sims">the sims</a>, <a href="/tags/lettice-and-lovage">lettice and lovage</a>, <a href="/tags/washington-square">washington square</a>, <a href="/tags/lonely-passion-judith-hearne">the lonely passion of judith hearne</a>, <a href="/tags/prime-miss-jean-brodie">the prime of miss jean brodie</a>, <a href="/tags"></a></div></div></div>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:05 +0000EBR Administrator1018 at http://www.electronicbookreview.comJ. Yellowlees Douglas respondshttp://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/fandango
<div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden clearfix">
<div class="markup">by</div>
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">J. Yellowlees Douglas</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="field field-name-field-publication-date field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">2004-05-22</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-riposte-to field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Riposte to:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/thread/firstperson/anticolonial">Towards Computer Game Studies</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-source-url field-type-link-field field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Source URL:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Eskelinen makes some compelling points in “Towards Computer Game Studies” that traverse ground that has remained virtually untrammeled, surprisingly so, given the recent, explosive growth of PC and videogames – in 2001, Americans began to lay out more cash for interactive games than for evenings at the cinema. And Markku’s uses of both Genette and Aarseth help make games like <span class="booktitle">Tetris</span> and <span class="booktitle">Civilization III</span> intelligible in theoretical terms. In the end, treating all computer games as if they fell tidily into a single genre is a heroic gesture, intended to lay the foundation for a sound critical understanding of what transpires when a user picks up the phone and hears a threatening message from <span class="booktitle">Majestic</span> on the other end of the line, as well as for what’s going on during the forty hours you’ve just spent with <span class="booktitle">Grim Fandango</span>.</p>
<p>But while <span class="booktitle">The Sims</span> and <span class="booktitle">Black and White</span> are closer to, say, a game of chess than to an episode of <span class="booktitle">ER</span>, a growing number of games use narratives as affective hooks to draw readers in and hold their interest, and to appeal to a wider audience (see the Douglas and Hargadon chapter for online surveys calling strongly for more backstory), an audience not necessarily interested in the gratifications offered by shoot-`em-up skill-based games or by strategy-based simulations. <span class="booktitle">X-Files: The Game</span>, for example, like <span class="booktitle">The Last Express</span> derives its entire intelligibility and appeal from blending the trappings and satisfactions of traditional narratives to the exploratory and agency-based pleasures of interactivity. In both <span class="booktitle">X-Files</span> and <span class="booktitle">Last Express</span>, as well as Sega’s <span class="booktitle">Shenmue</span>, virtually none of the action represents a test of any kind of skill, dexterity, or problem-solving. In fact, unlike all other games, your ability to remain within the other-world of the interactive depends mostly on your continued willing suspension of disbelief and not on your ability to out-maneuver, out-serve, out-gun, or out-run your opponents.</p>
<p>Ultimately, looking to either narratology or to games for our understanding of interactives will offer only a highly limited return, since we’re looking at, essentially, a still-developing range of genres in a new medium. Just as film is more than the sum of image, mise-en-scene, sound, and narrative, interactives can be both more than the sum of game or narrative. In <span class="booktitle">Shenmue</span>, for example, players can track Ryo’s search for his father’s killer, but they can also elect to live in Ryo’s world and simply interact with its constituents – 332 characters (including several animals) – hang out at the local arcade, visit the family shrine, work, browse the contents of your fridge, and care for your ailing kitten. Is this a game? A narrative? Or something else altogether?</p>
<p style="text-align:right"><a class="internal" href="/thread/firstperson/starry">Richard Schechner responds</a></p>
<p style="text-align:right"><a class="internal" href="/thread/firstperson/brusque">Markku Eskelinen responds</a></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/narratology">narratology</a>, <a href="/tags/interactive-games">interactive games</a>, <a href="/tags/interactive-gaming">interactive gaming</a>, <a href="/tags/markku-eskelinen">Markku Eskelinen</a>, <a href="/tags/gerard-genette">gerard genette</a>, <a href="/tags/espen-aarseth">espen aarseth</a>, <a href="/tags/tetris">tetris</a>, <a href="/tags/civilization-iii">civilization III</a>, <a href="/tags/majestic">majestic</a>, <a href="/tags/grim-fandango">grim fandango</a>, <a href="/tags/sims">the sims</a>, <a href="/tags/black-and-white">black and white</a>, <a href="/tags/er">Er</a>, <a href="/tags/x-files">x-files</a>, <a href="/tags/last-express">the last express</a>, <a href="/tags/shenmue">shenmue</a>, <a href="/tags"></a></div></div></div>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:25:05 +0000EBR Administrator946 at http://www.electronicbookreview.com